SHAPIRO: Screaming and whining aren’t strategies

This week, Democrats pulled out all the stops in their attempts to stop President Trump’s pick, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, from gaining a seat on the Supreme Court. Now, Democrats have no power to stop Kavanaugh’s ascension; thanks to former Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Democrats invoked the so-called nuclear option in order to reduce the burden for approving judicial nominees down to a simple majority. This has left Democrats and their allies with two options and two options only: screaming and whining.

First, the screaming.

Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., both of whom have already announced they will not support Kavanaugh’s nomination, attempted to shut down the Senate Judiciary Committee Kavanaugh hearing. Harris immediately called for an adjournment so that she could supposedly review more of Kavanaugh’s documents. Then Booker jumped in. By the end of the first 40 minutes of the hearing, Harris had interrupted eight times; Booker 10 times; Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., 13 times; Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, six times; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., three times; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., twice; Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. once; and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., once. Apparently, all were acting at the behest of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who was attempting to run out the shot clock … or something.

That was just the beginning. Women’s March activist and terrorist sympathizer Linda Sarsour showed up to scream at Republicans; she was arrested. Several more feminist protesters showed up dressed as cast members of “The Handmaid’s Tale”; other feminists simply screamed at the top of their lungs during the hearing, forcing their ejection. Planned Parenthood Action tweeted, “This is what the resistance looks like, and we’re going to fight like hell to #StopKavanuagh.”

The screaming, needless to say, did not work.

And so, the Democrats deployed the next prong of their attack: whining. First, a bevy of leftist commentators on Twitter deployed to inform Americans that Zina Bash, a former Kavanaugh law clerk, was secretly utilizing a white supremacy signal while sitting behind Kavanaugh. Amy Siskind of The Weekly List tweeted, “What fresh hell is this!!!??? Kavanaugh’s assistant Zina Bash giving the white power sign right behind him during the hearing? This alone should be disqualify!!!” Eugene Gu, a Twitter celebrity doctor, called the supposed sign a “national outrage and a disgrace to the rule of law.” Video of Bash earned millions of views on Twitter within a few hours.

There’s only one problem: Bash is half-Mexican and half-Jewish, and her paternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Oops.

But more whining was in order. Fred Guttenberg, the father of a Parkland shooting victim, stated that he tried to introduce himself to Kavanaugh but Kavanaugh wouldn’t shake his hand. Again, there was only one problem: That never happened. White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah explained: “As Judge Kavanaugh left for his lunch break, an unidentified individual approached him. Before the Judge was able to shake his hand, security had intervened.”

Here’s the truth: Judicial hearings are largely useless at this point. Thanks to the destruction of Reagan nominee Judge Robert Bork in 1987, judicial nominees know not to answer direct questions about judicial rulings and philosophy, and senators know to only ask questions most likely to land them on television. With that in mind, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., should simply bring up Kavanaugh for a vote and end this circus.

But he won’t. The circus will continue. Our politics will continue to degrade. Anybody who thinks President Trump is the sole performer under the big top should realize that the circus has three rings, and Democrats occupy at least one of them.

Ben Shapiro, 34, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show” and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is The New York Times best-selling author of “Bullies.” He lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles.

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